Track motion -- I'll give it a shot. I go way back to the Video Factory days where I don't recall there being a track motion -- it was pan/crop and that's it. I've been trying to use way to do it and was getting really frustrated.

To know that it's at least possible will keep me working! Thanks!

I'd just put the two videos on separate tracks, then use pan/crop to shrink and move the videos around.

This is a video I did where the whole thing is pretty much pan/cropped:

pan / cropped video[/link]

WOW dibbkd!!!!!!! You blow me away :O Those are some best videos I've seen. Great job. I don't even need to ask if you are a pro :) Thanks for sharing. Cin

Thanks OhMyGosh... but no, I'm not a pro, but I do spend a lot of time making the videos. You'll notice they're pretty much all of my kids!

Help making "24" style PIP

It's worth pointing out here, since it might not be obvious, that you aren't stuck with a 4:3 or 16:9 "TV Screen" shape for your images and videos. Pan/Crop and Track Motion both have options to disable the "Lock Aspect Ratio" feature, but these options act very differently in Pan/Crop vs. Track Motion.

On Pan/Crop, you can disable the Lock Aspect Ratio by clicking the fifth icon down at the left edge of the Pan/Crop window. Now, with this option disabled, you can change width and height independently. You can take a tall, skinny rectangle out of your video frame. This would be very useful for a 24-style montage, or for any side-by-side video.

On Track Motion, however, disabling the Lock Aspect Ratio has a very different effect. Your full video image is simply stretched or compressed. So if you have a video image of a car, for example, and use track motion to make a tall, skinny rectange, your entire car will still be in the image, but will be squished. I suppose this feature in track motion could be cleverly used to make yourself look a little skinnier on video. :-)

Tim L

Excellent point Tim_L.

In fact, I made the effects in this video entirely using pan/crop:

Pan / Crop to Duplicate the kids[/link]

I just put my cam on a tripod and told my girl to play on each part of the swing set for a few minutes. I then pan/cropped the pieces together to get what you see there.

First, nice work again dibbkd! I hope you won't leave us hanging and will give a little better explaination of how you did that :) As long as we are on Pan/Crop....can someone explain to me what the circle is in the pan/crop window, and what is the little blue dot in the middle, and what does it do when you move it? It just seems to make a bigger dotted circle with no noticeable difference. Finally, in PhotoShop I can take a picture and stretch it to fit objects that are a skew (computer screen, picture frame, TV, etc.), but I can't seem to be able to do that here :( Any help would be appreciated as usual. Thanks. Cin

The blue dot you can move around is the center of rotation. If you specify a rotation for your clip, it will rotate about this point, wherever you place it.

The outer circle just indicates where you can click and drag to do a manual rotation. If you click anywhere outside the "F" rectangle frame, but inside the circle, you can do a rotate. Outside the circle, your pointer changes to a hand, and click-and-drag just positions your workspace.

I'm not sure of the significance of the smaller circle that appears while you are moving the center of rotation.

Don't forget you can also specify settings manually by typing in values at the left side of the screen. So for example, you could do the old movie thing where a newspaper spins into view. Set a keyframe at the start of your image, and another a few seconds into it. On your first keyframe, zoom way out so your "newspaper" looks small. On your second keyframe, zoom in a bit to get the final image size you want for your newspaper. Then, under Rotation, type in 1080 for Angle, and your image will rotate 3 times as it comes into view.

Keep in mind that for pan crop, you are rotating the viewing frame. So if you want your image to rotate clockwise, you need to rotate the viewing frame counter-clockwise (anti-clockwise).

Tim L

Click on the second video thumbnail on this page to see a quick "how to" of my seven kids video:

http://www.myhax0r.net/videos/duplicating-kids.htm"How to duplicate the kids"[/link]

Finally, in PhotoShop I can take a picture and stretch it to fit objects that are a skew (computer screen, picture frame, TV, etc.), but I can't seem to be able to do that here.

The full (pro) version of Vegas has 3D track motion, which lets you position a track in 3D space as you describe. In VMS, however, you might be able to achieve a similar result using the "Deform" video FX. Use pan/crop to zoom out from your image, then use Deform to adjust the image. It will probably be tedious, because you can't just grab the corners of the image and skew them directly. You'll have to play with sliders.

Tim L

Starting with version 6, Vegas Studio also has Track Motion.

Also, in all versions, in Pan/Crop one can turn off Maintain Aspect Ratio to achieve the same thing.

Thanks for all the help and info Tim. I finally see that the blue dot is as you said, the center of rotation. I also appreciate your tip on how to skew the video. With a little practice I think I will be able to make it work. Take care. Cin

Thanks for the help Kelly, but am I missing something? I still can't seem to skew the clips to fit a non square or rectangular shape using just pan/crop or track motion. I am trying the deform effect as Tim suggested, and that seems like it will work with a little time and patience :) Thanks again. Cin

Thanks for the great link. I would love to know how you made the tutorials (you need to make a tutorial on making tutorials :) ). I was able to download the green screen as a .wmv file, but the others wanted to come as .html Any help? Wasn't able to play them on the net. Thanks again. Cin